I have a question that someone else asked me and I don't know the answer. I have a friend on here that uses WebTV and her screen has been jumping to the point that it's hard to type a message. What could cause this?

TeamBundy: Another thing which will make a PC "freeze" for short time is if your hard drive is fragmented a lot - so a good defrag always helps.

(For those that don't know - if a hard disk is not defraged, pices of data on the hard drive can be split up in many parts - which takes longer for the PC to read - which in turn, slows things down and can cause "freezes" when the PC can't get it's information fast enough)

BIG BAD WOLF: thank you very much for the link and information! I'll download it and check out what is going with the PC. I'll do it within tonight and tomorrow: there is another debugging to be done here at home that has at the moment higher priority (laundry )

Is there a way to say what programs still have left stuff in the registry that may be slowing the pc down (other than spyware)? The reason is that I feel that I haven't installed too many new things on my PC and it did run smoothly for most of the time before recently (maybe a month or two ago).

TeamBundy: I don't think it would be influenced by the Java updates.

TeamBundy: Sometimes you will be surprised on what is ran when a PC starts up (and continues to run in the background)

I use a program called StartupRun - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/strun.html

It shows everything that starts at PC startup. (When I install a new PC for a user, I even run this). Things like Adobe has things running at startup to speed up their product (but if you rarely use their product, no point having it run in the background - just take the extra 2 seconds later when you do actually start the program).

Anyway, this program allows you to right click, and "disable" something from starting - Of course I guess I should also warn if you don't know what something is - it either means it might be very important where you don't want to touch it - or some kind of spyware messing things up. So be carefull when using it.

Oh, and more memory will always help. 512MB is not much anymore - if you can upgrade it at all - even to 1 GB, you will find it helping a lot.

Fencer: I just found that there were two "java updates" (J2SE Runtime environment 5.0 Update 6 and Update 8) installed on my PC (actually, also a notebook :) ), plus a third thing called "java 2 runtime environment SE v.1.4.2_03". I uninstalled the "Update 6" (maybe there was a conflict), but nothing happened (nothing good or bad... which appears to make the update 6 unnecessary!). Do you also have these freezes or do you just want to buy a 2GB RAM new one? Because if you don't have them, I'm sure you can give us some good advice (other than reinstalling everything ) on what we could do to have more memory or what we could check! :-)

Fencer:My PC has 2GB of RAM and runs on a 3200 Pentium 4 processor.  But I have these 'freezes' too.

TeamBundy: My notebook has 512 MB RAM too and it's hardly enough these times. With all patches from the Windows Update server I guess the RAM is more and more occupied by the system components and the freezes caused by the swapping process happen more often.
That's why I want to purchase a new notebook with 2 GB RAM as soon as possible.

Does anybody have experience on dealing with the PC freezing for a couple of seconds (everything freezes, music, mouse, etc) and then continuing at precisely where it got caught up before the freeze? I have both Spybot and Ad-Aware, use Mozilla, have enough space on my hard disk and also 512 MB RAM (which should be enough), but also a history in Spyware on my PC (maybe the registries are still affected?). I notice that it usually has some problems with Java-based applications. And hints/suggestions on what to do? (already defragmented, and cleared up space with the Win XP features).

Thanks!

gambler104: I tried everything that I could think of and nothing...then I googled it,lol....I don't run internet explorer as my primary,but I do have it so I took a chance and brought up the internet explorer and looked at the history through that screen...yippee!! The website was there! I bookmarked it this time,and registared on the site!

anastasia: the history is the best bet. if not that, try typing the first letter in and see if it pops up. If you don't remember the first letter you could try every letter. This should work unless you've deleted your cookies and temporary files.

I know that all websites that you visit are put into a temp file.I should have bookmarked the site I went to and now I can't find it! Can someone tell me how to retreive the site form my computer.Thanks!!

gambler104: go to your network connections, right click on the connection you want to use, but which doesnt work, and click on 'reset' (i hope thats the english term they used :)) .. or turn it off in that screen, and when its off, turn it on again

if you want to use your wireless connection, be sure its turned on in network connections

maybe your router doesnt allow the mac addres of your laptop ?

are you trying to connect to another computer from your laptop ? or are you trying to use the internet connection of that other computer ? or are you trying to connect to the network via a router ?

it did work when you had the lan cable connected ? but it doesnt now that you are trying to do it wireless ?

gambler104:

that happened once to me and I right clicked the network connections icon and had to enable the LAN. if you don't have an icon you can get to it from programs and click the network conn. and try troubleshoot option if enable doesn't work..

BIG BAD WOLF: But the problem is I'm using a wireless network. And the computer that I'm taking the connection from is working fine so it doesn't make sense to me why my laptop shouldn't work fine as well.

gambler104: Plug it back in? I'm not sure what your question is.

I was working on my laptop earlier today and a LAN cable was unplugged which prevented me from accessing the internet. Is there a quick way to fix this?

whether theres a way to delete IE 7 and go back to IE 6

WatfordFC: Support Discontinued
On July 11, 2006, Microsoft will end support for Windows 98, 98SE and Me, which will have the resulting effect of making these operating systems less secure (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx). Windows 98/Me are older operating systems, and are therefore inherently more vulnerable to attacks than newer operating systems. Now that Microsoft will no longer provide security updates to these operating systems any PC running them will become increasingly prone to security vulnerabilities.

WatfordFC: If she has Internet Explorer(IE) as navigator of internet then she could try to open a session of IE and go to the option Tools of the menu and select Windows Update. I think it ought to be enough.

I am trying to help prettymamma out with her pc. She has Windows Millenium and has never done a windows updates before, how does she o this. Thank you

ok this is what happens, i have firefix as my browser, then yesterday all of a sudden my smilies wouldnt work, and when i changed to rich text editor , to see if they would work there there was no window. This morning i log on and my browser is internet explorer, i think brill, go to use smilies on plain text editor and nothing no window to type in, switch to rich text editor and i can use smilies. Get booted off bk, open up my browser to log back in again and guess, i am back to firefox and cant use smilies again....gggrrrrrr

I posted this on the tournament board, but it's really more of a problem for a computer to solve, though it can be done with paper and pen. I'd appreciate any help or ideas for a solution and it might also be a fun type of problem for someone to work on or solve. Or copy it and send to a friend you think might know how to solve it. ==================================
>>

I have something I've not worked on in awhile and I wasn't able to figure it out when I did work on it. I am wondering if you or someone else might be able to point out to me where I'm going wrong, or solve it yourself and show me the numbers for me to check and explain how you did it. At least to its completion with the exact number of possible deals, not approximations. It involves the dealing of the first hand in a game of Building. After the first hand is dealt the dealer faces four cards to the table. Similar to what is done in the game Cassino, if you're familiar with that game as I doubt if you know Building, but it doesn't really matter what game it is to understand this problem. The number of cards dealt to each player is seven if they're playing two handed, but that shouldn't have any baring on it either. You could just take a deck of playing cards made for Building and deal the top four cards off the top to solve this problem. But if you need details to help I will gladly supply them. This might not be exactly on topic for this discussion board, but I am the tournament director and get asked about the deal of the four cards and the odds related to the turning of a Jack or Joker or more when someone is dealing. The other problem related to this one is what are the odds and the number of hands turned up when the four cards can taken in one turn by the non-dealer on his first turn. I'll get to the details of that, if you can help me with the turned up cards first. The clearing of the table, if you or someone else is interested in it, can be done through messages or some other board unless it is appropriate on this one. I can solve it through brute force methods and using the fingers on my hands, I've just never attempted to do it as yet.

Anyways, back to the turning up of the four cards. The deck of cards used to play Building is the 52 standard deck used for Bridge or Poker plus two Jokers, for a total of 54 cards. When the dealer finishes dealing the players their first hand he faces four cards to the table between them. If any of the four cards turned up is a Joker or a Jack, the card or cards are set aside and another is dealt up to replace each one. If the replacement card is also a Jack or Joker, it too is set aside and another card is dealt up. Since there's four Jacks and two Jokers, the maximum number of cards set aside is six. None or one is the common amount, with two happening on occasion. The most I've ever seen is five and I've seen that three times, but then I've played thousands of games of Building. I've never seen all six turned up, but I'm sure it's possible.

What I've had trouble figuring out in this problem is how many different ways can each amount of Jacks and Jokers be turned up exactly. In Five Card Stud Poker there's an exact number of ways you could have a four of a kind dealt to you and it's not 13, but 624. That's always a good one to puzzle people with. There's 40 straight flushes in Poker that are easily countable on one's hands, no calculator required and they think only 13 four of a kinds, so why does a straight flush rank as the higher hand if there's more of them? I'm old school, a royal flush is a straight flush and not a seperately ranked hand as is now commonly shown in Poker charts. The best straight flush, but still just a straight flush.

It's fairly easy to figure out how many times the four cards will not have any Jacks or Jokers. Since there's 6 cards that are Jacks or Jokers, that leaves 48 that aren't. The first turned up could be any of those 48, the second would be one of the 47 left, the third one of the 46, and the fourth one of the 45. Since these can be dealt in any order, you need to divide the product of these numbers by the number of ways one can group 4 things, which is 24.
48 × 47 × 46 × 45 ­­÷ (4 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 194,580
This can be written 48!/4!44! if you have one of them calculators that does the factorials on it. I'm used to paper and pen, but calculators handle big numbers pretty good nowadays with exact numbers and not approximations. Seems like there's a calculator built right into the computer too. Oh yeah, a computer's original use!

OK, that's easy and I'm sure it's the correct and exact amount of different times the four cards can be turned up without a Jack or Joker amongst them. What happens when one one of the four cards is a Jack or Joker?
48 × 47 × 46 × 6 ÷ (3 × 2 × 1 × 1) = 103,776
or written (48!6!)/(45!3!5!1!)
For two I have 48 × 47 × 6 × 5 ÷ (2 × 1 × 2 × 1) = 16920
or written (48!6!)/(46!2!4!2!)
For three I have 48 × 6 × 5 × 4 ÷ (1 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 960
or written (48!6!)/(47!1!3!3!)
For four I have 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 ÷ (4 × 3 × 2 × 1)= 15
or written (6!)/(4!2!)
So far this is easy enough to follow and can be done with some paper and a deck of cards while imagining different ways of cards being dealt or combinations of sets. The numbers themselves are kind of large, so a calculator comes in handy.

The first four cards can have 0 through 4 Jacks or Jokers in the total of all those different ways and there's an easy check for it too.
194580 + 103776 + 16920 + 960 + 15 = 316,251
The check is 54 × 53 × 52 × 51 ÷ (4 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 316,251
or written 54!/(50!4!)
So far nothing complicated once you see how this is done. My problem is what happens when the dealer finishes dealing the cards to have just four cards turned up that aren't Jacks or Jokers. The turning of the cards after the first four is dependent on the card turn up to replace a turned up Jack or Joker. The more Jacks and Jokers turned up, the more complicated it gets. I tried the two extremes, and maybe you can see what it is that I'm not understanding or overlooking.
The case of when just one Jack or Joker is one the first four cards is fairly straight forward. It happens 103,776 times out of 316,251, which happens about 32.8% of the time and is close to 2 to 1 against it in odds. This and the four cards not having any Jacks or Jokers 61.5% cover a little 94% of the four card combinations that can be dealt.

The case of one Jack or Joker in the first four cards:

The dealer sets it aside and deals another card. If it's not a Jack or Joker, he's done dealing the first hand. He shows the non-dealer the one card that was set aside and then faces it on the bottom of the deck for use later in the deal of the other hands remaining. It no longer matters for this problem. This fifth card that he turned up wasn't a Jack or Joker, so it had to be one the remaining 45 cards. This is the beginning of where I get confused in figuring out the exact number of ways this can happen. Should the number of deals where just one Jack or Joker was faced equal 103,776 × 45? Which is 4,669,920? Since it takes five cards to be dealt when this happens, we'll need to figure the case of one Jack or Joker based on a set of 5 cards, right?
Doing it as {48 × 47 × 46 × 6 ÷ (3 × 2 × 1)} × 45 = 4,669,920 is not the same thing as
48 × 47 × 46 × 45 × 6 ÷ 24 = 1,167,480 A quarter of the other number, but exactly the amount of ways one Jack or Joker can dealt out of a deck of 54 cards into a hand of five cards. Not only that, but the first number is larger than the group it comes from which is 3,162,510, the number of sets of 5 in 54 objects, 54!/(49!5!). I'm obviously missing something. This second number, 1,167,480 is the exact number of times just one Jack or Joker will come up in five cards, but is not the right number for this problem because it includes the case of when the first four cards contain no Jacks or Jokers and the dealing stops before a fifth card (The Jack or Joker) would be dealt. For some reason I think subtracting 194,580 from the any of these numbers will not yield the right answer, though it might be the thing to do with 1,167,480 and get 972,900.

The other extreme is taking the first four cards to be all Jacks and Jokers. This happens 15 times out of 316,251. About .0047% of the time at odds of 316,236 to 15 or exactly 21,082.4 to 1 against. Yep, that doesn't happen much. I can't remember if I've ever seen that happen or not. I have seen four Jacks turned up, but that was after turning some replacement cards for some of the earlier Jacks.

The case of all four of the first four cards being Jacks or Jokers:

In this extraordinary event, the dealer (besides smiling and looking forward to the last hand of the deal), would set all four of the cards to the side and turn up four more cards. If none of these four replacement cards are Jacks or Jokers, he's done dealing the first hand. He picks up the four cards set aside and places them face up on the bottom of the deck for use later in the deal during the last hand.
Just how many times can this happen? It'd seem to be 15 × 194,580 which is 2,918,700. I believe this number might be correct for this particular example, but it isn't number for how many times the dealer might turn up exactly 4 Jacks or Jokers. There are a lot of ways that the dealer might indeed turn up exactly 4 Jacks or Jokers while dealing the four cards to the table. He could deal one Jack or Joker and three other cards in the first four cards and then turn up three consecutive Jacks and Jokers as replacements and then a fourth card not a Jack or Joker, or he could turn up 3 Jacks or Jokers in the first four cards and deal in a number a ways just one more Jack or Joker before getting four cards that aren't Jacks or Jokers. I tried to make a tree diagram for these choices in dealing each replacement card when this situation occurs and I went crazy! It's in the archives somewhere as I haven't worked on this in over fifteen years. When I got the tree diagram to the chance of having all 6 Jacks and Jokers turned up on the deal of the first hand, I had branches everywhere and an impossibly high number of occurances for what would be the rarest event of this deal to happen. The branches stop when 4 cards that aren't Jacks or Jokers are dealt, but go on to a possible ten cards if all the Jacks and Jokers we to be dealt.

My brother saw me working on this problem years ago and came up with a solution that I didn't like as it didn't cover every possible deal or have the exact number of deals for each combination of Jacks and Jokers turned up. He just programmed a computer to randomize 54 numbers and then pretend to deal until there was four numbers not 49 through 54. He had the computer tally each deal and then do it again. He had the computer run all night and then gave me the percentage for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Jacks or Jokers being dealt. Definitely not a mathematician's answer, but he's an engineer and didn't see why I wanted exact numbers. His approach did give me an idea for counting the number of ways the four cards and the Jacks and Jokers could be determined. Seeing how he did this over twenty years ago and computers are lots faster nowadays, my idea might actually be practical today. Just have the computer methodically count and go through each possible combination of dealing the cards. Since the first four cards when dealt without a Jack or Joker total is known precisely, you could even skip that part and just do the counting from when one or more are turned up.

Anyways, there's my problem and I'd certainly like some help on it and a way to check the numbers. And of course, any new approach to solving it, or how you solved it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you'd like the details for the clearing of the table's original four cards by the non-dealer or eldest hand, just ask and I'll get it to you.

Thank you for your help

Fencer: Well i have woken up this morning, and now find i have Internet Explorer on my pc, but still some very sick smilies, . This is frustrating me now, everything was fine until i set up the fellowship LOL

WatfordFC: If there is a JavaScript error you described on the BK.com board, it's possible that your browser is using an old version of the JavaScript code from its cache (although it is highly improbable with Firefox). Try to clear the cache and load the page again with ctrl-f5.
Also, please make sure your pages are using the correct versions of JavaScripts by looking at the page source - functions-6.js, rte-12.js, rtecodes-6.js.

WatfordFC: See if rebooting your computer helps - sometimes that is the best way to "reset" things which may get corrupted on the PC.

My smilies do not work anymore, all the right boxes ae checked in the settings. Also when i switched to rich text editor to see if they would work then, nothing, not even a box to type in. They stopped suddenly, i think when i actually started a new fellowship up, but cant be certain. There also seems to be a load of errors on the javascript console, please can somebody help me. Thank you

Nothingness: It doesn't work when you use the RTE editor (alhough it should, there is a small bug). Switch to a normal plain text editor and all links will be clickable.

I have a problem with play warcraft frozen throne on eurobattle.net , i following steps on this page( http://eurobattle.net/faq.php?faq=need#faq_files )but i have a problem yet, when i click on battle.net in game main menu , it says that your game version is not valid or you used wrong patch, but i sure that follow those steps carefully. plaese help me in this case if you know.
thanks.

BIG BAD WOLF: No, it happens with my e-mail as well. I use hotmail and when i open an e-mail alot of the pictures dont come up, it never used to be like this when i used IE

WatfordFC: "i opened it and all i got was a grey background and loads of little boxes, no actual pictures"

If you right click on the box, do you have the option to "Download pictures" or something like that?

oh really?didnt know that firefox just supports OperatingSystems that will occur after 2010 or before 98...;-) - this cannot be... maybe there are some hidden windows you cant see????

diogenes: I am running windows XP, that one doesnt show up lol

that sounds good... ;-)

diogenes: Ive jsut had a look in the compatability box, should i check the box to the windows i am running?

WatfordFC: check out the firefox-adjusts: "extras -> adjusts (or "preferences" or "options"- i dont know cause i use the german version) -> content - there is a checkbox "load graphics". is it checked?

awesome: I have checked my program files and it isnt there, i have definately not uninstalled it, to be honest i dont think it was ever on here, when i got the pc

WatfordFC:

how do you get Windows Updates? did you uninstall IE ? maybe this is your problem... sometimes on Firefox there is a box that needs to be checked for "show all images"

Since i have had a new PC , i have firefox and not IE anymore. The problem that i have been noticing is e-mails not downloading problem, i open and e-mail, and pictures wont show. If somebody send me a link on here, i.e somebody just sent me a google eart link, i opened it and all i got was a grey background and loads of little boxes, no actual pictures, does anyone know if this is a firefox problem.

ellieoop: I don't know if it is different on a mac. But in the pc version, you click tools->delete private data... if you click the "details" button in the upcoming dialogue, you can select which data you want to be deleted.

edit: and if you do it like you did it (i.e. click on "history" not on "delete private data"), you can click on "view" (the one just above the history table, not in the main menu) and change the view to "by time visited" - now you won't see the nondeletable folders and you can select all items with ctrl+a. Now the "delete" button should get enabled, and you can delete them all.

when i type it looks tiny, but reading it here, it's fine.

i can't figure out how to empty history, i went to preferences and it says history, but when i open it, it says empty cache, and under tools, it says history, and it has 100s of games, and i seem to only be able to delete them one by one, does it show up differently on a mac?

ellieoop: with the mouse: Ctrl+mouse wheel
with the keyboard: NUM<+> to zoom in; NUM<-> to zoom out

You can find more shortcuts at the Opera features page

i'm on a mac laptop and i downloaded opera, it is very fast, but i can't figure out how to enlarge the text.
thx. ellie

temo: thank you for your help 

volant: Yes, I think it is. Occasionaly, you can use it to scan your registry and delet needless paths and keys in registry.

Furthermore, I have a good experiences using Advanced Uninstaller 2006 instead of using remove programsa app. in control panel in windows. It deletes you all trash of application you want to be deleted, than scan your registry and finaly deleted all uncessery keys in it (or created when installing prog).
that is what I can really recommend and this way you can preced to overload your registry in Win.

Hrqls: the encoding classes wont help me .. i need to send 1 byte which has to hold characters from ascii value 0 to ascii value 255 .. the only encoding class which sends only 1 byte is the ascii encoding which sends the 63 (3F) when i try to send a character with ascii value of 128 or higher

but! (yeah! ;)) i can also send the string or character array as a byte array ... which then bypasses the encoding class (or simply doesnt need it)

this works! ;)

so for the loop to send all characters with ascii value from 0 to 255 i now use :

byte[] bytArray;
bytArray = new byte[256];
for (int intI = 0; intI <256; intI++)
{
	bytArray[intI] = (byte)intI;
}
comKAR.Write(bytArray, 0, 256);

which works flawlessly

thanks for the help and ideas .. it set me on the right track and made it work :)

Hrqls: i am on the right track .. it doesnt send 3F anymore .. but now what should be 80 sends C2 80
81 is now C2 81, ...., FF is now C3 BF

i will see what i can do now ... at least the parity error (which wasnt one imo ;)) is gone